Australian Skeptics vs CMI—Australia

Australia’s largest metropolitan newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, hosted this debate on its website.

15 June 2005

[Editor: As of March 2007, the material is no longer on the newspaper’s website, but the debate is available as a pdf—link at the end of this web page—and is also available from our web store as the booklet Skeptics vs Creationists: a formal debate].

CMI–Australia accepted an invitation for a written ‘mini-debate’ with the Australian Skeptics on the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) weblog of Margo Kingston (a well-known left-wing Australian journalist) which began in June. This was an exciting opportunity to get the message out to many thousands of secular folk. To see feedback to this website from this debate, visit our feedback page posted July 1.

Topic: Did the universe and life evolve, or was it specially created in 6 days?

The format included three essays each up to 1500 words:

13 June—Opening essay

16 June—Second essay (rebuttal and/or new material)

19 June—Final essay (rebuttal, summary, etc.)

The debate generated unprecedented interest; normally a few dozen comments are posted on this popular secular media site in response to issues and articles, but hundreds and hundreds of people have posted reactions to this exchange. They include testimony from a former skeptic, and also from an uncommitted person searching for answers, who says that the science debate was won ‘hands down’ by the creationist team. The link to the site is webdiary.smh.com.au/index.html [no longer available from March, 2007].

Refuting Evolution has sold over 500,000 copies! Impressive? But Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion has sold 8.5 million copies. Please support CMI so we can get more of this information out. Support this site